The End of a Melody
by calliopechild
Summary: "Not every end is the goal. The end of a melody is not its goal, and yet if a melody has not reached its end, it has not reached its goal." -Friedrich Nietzsche. Sometimes, an ending is everything it has to be, and nothing you want it to be.


_**Disclaimer**: Not mine!_

Karai+Leo fics, why can't I quit you? :b I can't seem to help myself; there's just so much potential for angst and psychology and so many different takes on their relationship/interactions. This one is yet another perspective, a different one from the dynamic in TMTC and worlds away from the one in WWCHB (and hopefully better written than the latter, too). Mainly it's just kind of a piece for fun, playing with a more poetic, descriptive style than I usually write in, as well as playing with present tense. I hope you enjoy it, and there are translations at the end for the Japanese phrases (which are towards the end of the fic). If I've botched those completely, please let me know; they're the closest I could find to what I was looking for, and should be fairly accurate.

Anyway, I hope you like it!

(Warnings: angst, character death)

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><p>In a city like New York, there is no such thing as privacy, no place to retreat to for solitude or escape. The dark, unpopulated corners are far from safe, filled with those who lie in wait to prey on others, and dozens throng to any place filled with light, no matter the hour. There is always another soul awake, always another pair of eyes watching the same sky, and never anything like peaceful silence.<p>

As such, Karai is far from surprised when, as she is out one night for a brief moment of air and peace, she spies a bulky, misshapen figure several rooftops away, a flitting shadow far to her left. Unbeknownst to most of the city's populace, it is not the criminals who rule the night and hold court over the dark alleys and dimmed skyscrapers; it is the ninja. New York does not belong to the criminals; they are like rats, roaming free in the darkness but scattering for their dens as soon as a hawk's shadow passes over them.

New York can only be claimed by those strong enough or with a force great enough to cover its sprawling bounds. Karai knows that beyond her, only four others could fit into either category—and she watches one of them now.

The figure is running across the rooftops, but there is no sense of urgency about his movements. He moves steadily, clearing the gaps between the buildings with the same ease a jogger might hop over a grate in the sidewalk. Karai recognizes the movements almost unconsciously.

Leonardo.

She pauses where she stands, reaching up slowly to grip the tails of her headband to prevent them from flapping in the breeze. The movement would no doubt catch his eye, and she wants a moment to study him.

Another few seconds convinces her that he is out alone, with no sign of his brothers trailing along. This is no battle run, no journey with a purpose. He is not heading to or expecting trouble—no more than usual, at least.

It would be an ideal time to ambush him, Karai muses. She is only a few buildings away from her headquarters—she spares a moment for a brief flare of indignation at Leonardo's audacity, his obvious lack of concern at standing in the shadow of her empire—and could easily have her forces swarming Leonardo in a matter of minutes.

She doesn't make the call. She is honest enough about the gap in skill between her forces and the Turtles, and knows full well that Leonardo would be down a fire escape and halfway to the nearest manhole before the first of her soldiers set foot on the same building as him. It would be a waste of time, and she has no patience for the headache that would result, the inevitable injuries and casualties and necessary damage control.

It is not a night for such a battle, she thinks, not when she had only come out in pursuit of a few quiet moments of relative silence and solitude. She can't help the resentment she feels for Leonardo for choosing this part of the city to run through, even as she knows the thought is ridiculous and fanciful. Any night is the time for a battle, or any day—her father raised her to fight any time, anywhere. It would be tantamount to madness to let such a chance pass by, faced as she was with one of her enemies—her true enemy, really—alone and seemingly unprepared. She is all but obligated to take advantage of such an opportunity.

She just wanted some air, air and a little peace, she thinks as she releases her headband. But she is a child of duty, and duty calls too loudly to be ignored.

Karai only clears a single rooftop before the figure she is tracking across the rooftops halts in his path, two white eyeholes swiveling in her direction. He doesn't run, toward her or away. He simply waits. She wishes she could attribute it simply to his courage, to an ingrained unwillingness to flee from a fight, but she knows it is just a matter of confidence.

She lands on the rooftop he waits on unmolested, and he neither rushes her nor seeks to catch her off-guard, merely waits with his swords in hand. A consummate gentleman of _bushido_.

She all but pities him for it, when she isn't jealous of it.

"Karai."

"Leonardo." She draws her sword, discarding the barbs that sprang to her tongue at the sound of his calm greeting. She is in no mood for banter tonight, merely wants to get the fight over with, win, lose, or draw. She knows it is absurd that she considers a fight with an enemy to be worth so little consideration, but she can't bring herself to care. Her apathy and resentment makes her bitter, and tonight of all nights, her patience is nonexistent. "Shall we?"

She half thinks she sees his shoulders lift in a sigh, and his expression is inscrutable before it firms into resolve. "I suppose we should," he replies, and she is certain she is not imagining the resignation in his voice. He is no more anxious for this meeting than she is, and his apparent disregard just adds to her aggravation.

Karai doesn't spare another word before lashing out. She aims for his throat, then diverts her sword in a tight arc, using the force of his parry to scythe the sword down for his legs instead.

He blocks both attempts and goes on the offensive. She matches him, as always, sliding around his swords, converting her sullen anger into force as she batters at him. For all her attempts at improvisation, it could simply be one of a dozen fights they've had over the years; it's impossible not to fall into the same patterns, repeating strikes and blocks that have proven effective against each other in the past, until every battle is nearly the twin of its predecessors.

As always, the air is thick between them with the knowledge of how they've come to be so familiar with each other's fighting styles, with something more than just memories and words unspoken. It all but vibrates along with their swords, painted on their faces. It's not love—and never could be, not when there's enough water under the bridge to drown them both. It's hardly even really hate at this point, both of them too tired, and Leonardo, as always, too good and noble (_weak_, her father's part of her hisses) to hate anyone for long. It's bitterer, more worn, less vehement. Resentment, on her part. Contempt, perhaps, on his.

Familiarity breeds it, after all, and Leonardo knows her far too well.

At its base, though, it's just duty—simple and complicated as that. An easy excuse, and no answer at all. They're both long past finding joy in each other's deaths; the best they can hope for now is simply an end to things—any end, at this point.

Karai wants that end. This has become too much like a routine, something that simply happens once a week, like collating her company's finances or tallying the Foot's losses. She doesn't want that familiarity; Leonardo has no place being a fixed occurrence in her life.

Still, even now it's hard to feel like they're doing anything other than repeating the same dance over and over again, the same steps each time, a well-worn waltz to a funeral dirge, and the fact that she has the attention to spare on such frivolous thoughts just highlights how long this has consumed them. It is more like sparring than fighting, knowing the next move Leonardo will make as though they were simply pacing through _kata_. She spins away from one strike, raising her blade overhead as she turns, knowing what his next move will be—Leonardo always responds to overhead strikes with both swords, compensating for the force her extra height gives her with both his blades.

Only one sword connects with hers when the stroke falls. The part of her that simply watches the battle, complacent and distant, wonders idly where the other blade has gone.

A second later, she feels something like a shard of ice punch through her. Her lungs hitch and freeze, and she huffs out one surprised breath as her arms fall reflexively to her sides. It's only when a fine spray of red spatters across Leonardo's face at the action that she realizes what has happened.

She's found his second sword—or rather, it has found her.

The pain is there, enforcing the idea, locking her muscles in protest, but she still can't seem to process it, even when she looks down and sees the hilt sprouting from her stomach, high and just beneath her sternum. She simply never expected it, but she knows she should. Leonardo had been better than her (_in so many ways_) for a while, and truly, it was only his lamentable desire to give her yet another second chance that had kept him from killing her after she'd destroyed their home. That had always been the worst choice, brave but still weak, and she wonders if he's realized it didn't save anyone other than his conscience. Not his family, not him, and certainly not her.

Thanks to the shock, there's a curious lack of emotion other than a vague, almost detached sense of being offended that Leonardo deviated from the routine. It's accompanied by a sense of mild surprise, as though she'd seen a name she recognized or read something interesting in the paper. A new technology company has opened up across the way. Another is closing its doors. She lost the fight. She'll be dying today.

The same things that could happen any week.

She waits for the rage or denial, but it's absent. There's no anger or surprise that her end came at Leonardo's hands; she's long since ceased to contemplate that anyone but Leonardo would kill her. There's no guilt on his face, and, she realizes, no sense of betrayal in her; this was all but inevitable. They've laid claim to each other's deaths for so long now.

The feeling of something tearing inside wakes her up and changes her surprise to confusion as she tries to process the unnatural shift of steel piercing her, the fact that she'd been run through—the fact that she had never seen it coming. There'd been no bloodlust in Leonardo as they'd crossed blades or met each other's eyes, no warnings that he had suddenly decided to put an end to things. Looking at him again, she supposes what she'd taken for tired resignation when they met could have been resolve. With Leonardo, they could easily be the same thing, particularly when it comes to her.

She wonders if that hole in her guard has always been there, or if he only saw it today. But this dance is an old one, the moves routine, and she rather suspects that that opening has always been there. She wants to ask why he waited so long to exploit it, and wonders if he would have an answer he'd actually tell her.

"So. You win," she manages, feeling as though she should say something even though the sword vibrates inside of her with her words.

Leonardo looks old and tired, resigned rather than triumphant. "I'm not sure how much victory there is in this." He carefully sheathes his other sword, and no tremor shakes the blade as he grips her elbow, helping her stay on her feet.

He doesn't gloat, doesn't yank his sword free or drive it in to the hilt, and it's sad that that is the most gentle anyone has been with her in years. Her father…sometimes she thought he'd only been careful with her as a child out of necessity, to ensure she was bound to him. Either way, he was never one for gentleness, soft touches or frailty. (She never figured out if that was because those around him were simply that unimportant, or if he liked to remind them that they were soft and easy to kill.) The world had never treated her with anything other than impersonal, callous hands.

But now…in her time of dying, a small, quiet part of her that she's almost killed over the years wonders at a touch that doesn't scold, doesn't punish, doesn't seek to hurt, and it soaks up the feeling desperately.

Leonardo then tightens the hand on her elbow gently. "Hold on."

The consideration is completely and utterly bewildering, as is the way he slides his blade out of her body smoothly and evenly, not jerking the blade or causing any more damage. With the same control and precision with which he does everything, he pulls the sword out through its entry path perfectly, moving in complete reverse as if someone had decided to rewind the world. Unexpected, too, is the way his hand circles around her shoulders when her knees give out, his arm slowing her descent to the rough concrete of the roof rather than dropping her to crash and bleed.

(The thought of any more pain right now is something she shies away from, but still, the disregard would almost be easier. That, at least, she knows. Disregard is so much simpler than kindness, so much easier to understand.)

Even more unexpected is the way he folds himself into _seiza_ beside her, settling, his eyes fixed on her and his sword still lying bloody at his side.

A death vigil, she thinks, and wants to laugh, but the taste of copper is already creeping up her throat enough as it is, and she doesn't want to choke on any more of it or stoke the fire burning in her stomach. A death vigil with an enemy, and she wonders at the poetry of it, the cold cruelty it would have if it were anyone but Leonardo. Were it anyone else, it would have been a vigil to make sure she was dead, staying to watch for her last breath, to check for the last beat of her heart, to confirm that enough blood had slipped out of the hole in her gut; assurance that she was beyond any help.

(Sometimes, she thinks she always has been.)

With Leonardo…there's no telling what it is. Punishment or penance, for both or either of them. Whatever it is, his face is solemn and lined, not with something as unrealistic as guilt, but perhaps something as frivolous as regret.

She muses quietly that if he were anyone else, there would be panic and a frantic call for an ambulance. Even a complete stranger would comfort her. An outsider, a civilian, would try to administer first aid, would call for help in that instinctive desperation to save a life.

Leonardo doesn't offer. Karai doesn't ask.

She's long since given up on trying to understand him, with his diamond-hard convictions and black-and-white beliefs, his loyalty and the inexplicable way he has of bending but never breaking, and always, always making her the one in the wrong. Absolute conviction is of the things that connect them, that makes her hate him in a way that burns the same way her wound does. Both of them are certain they are right, are utterly loyal to those they serve and love, with no loyalty left over for anyone else, much less themselves.

Except that her conviction had wavered, strained by Leonardo and the irresistible pull of his personality and ideals. She hates him for breaking that inside of her, the same way she hates that he is still beside her. Is she some sort of mistake, some poor choice that he feels he has to see through to the end? Or some kind of twisted self-inflicted wound, a way for him to punish himself for ever trusting her?

She finds that she can't stand either option, not that she is a mess to be cleaned up or that she is an example of his worst choice. It's just as bad as pity.

"Why are you still here?"

There's a heavy silence, with the words hanging between them, and she focuses on Leonardo's face. "Would you rather I leave?" he asks in reply.

She knows it's as much of an answer as he's going to give her, and the frustration is familiar. Leonardo shares as little as possible, with only a fraction of what goes on behind his eyes ever making it past his lips. He lives by his own code and beliefs, with a rock-solid view of right and wrong that somehow had room for her in it, and she's never been able to fully understand any of it, or him. She wants to tell him _yes, go, and take your pity with you_—except that she realizes it's not pity. Not from him, not for her. There's no room for pity between the two of them.

Maybe it's closure, maybe it's another aspect of his convoluted sense of duty, maybe it's more of the emotional masochism that their rivalry/truce/relationship has consisted of since it started, or maybe it's all of the above. In truth, she's unlikely to figure it out, and given her current situation, it doesn't really matter. Part of her is just grateful that at least someone is there while she dies, because when she touches on the knowledge of her situation, everything feels like it telescopes, her awareness simultaneously shrinking to the deceptively small slit in her stomach and expanding to the canopy of the city around her. It's…hard, knowing that there are millions of lives surrounding her, just beyond her fingertips, and only the one beside her is even aware that she is about to disappear, let alone cares.

"No," she says reluctantly, swallowing as the taste of copper floods her mouth. "I do want to know why you don't finish it."

The look Leonardo gives her is remonstrative and somehow disappointed, as if she were a child purposefully giving the wrong answer in class, and she looks away. She knows why he doesn't end it, doesn't simply slide his sword through her heart or along her throat. For all that he is a warrior, Leonardo is still all too human, in a manner of speaking, and he has always been too kind.

"Do you need me to?"

A small flare of tired resentment curls in her chest in reaction to the incomprehensible concern implied in the words. Of course Leonardo would offer to end things for her, as easily as possible, to spare her pain rather than to put her out of his misery. From anyone else it'd be hypocrisy, but with Leonardo…his personality has always been like that, the flat and the edge of the blade at once, always letting others choose which side they'll face.

She wants to say yes, to just get it over with, because she is tired, a weariness that goes soul-deep from trying to drag the weight of her father's bloody legacy forward all by herself. (She's always been jealous of how Leonardo at least has three other pairs of shoulders to share the burden with.) It's uncomfortable to think of dying like this, Leonardo sitting silently beside her, somehow chastising and somehow comforting, both of them simply waiting until she bleeds out because Leonardo is too kind to abandon her, too kind (and cruel) to kill her any faster. But it's hard to say that word, and she doesn't have to strength to brace herself for the sight of his sword moving towards her throat. And somehow…if her death is going to be on his conscience at all, she'd rather it be in honest combat than to have it be a mercy killing. It's why she doesn't ask for help; not just out of pride, but also so he doesn't have to refuse her. Neither of them needs to hear her ask that question and hear him say no. It's a warrior's consideration, for both of them. If that makes her weak, so be it.

Besides, this kind of death, this quasi-_seppuku_, is somehow fitting, as is the fact that Leonardo initiated it for her—she has much to atone for, and he has always been far more concerned with honor than she could afford to be.

"No," she repeats.

Leonardo simply nods, not approval or judgment, just acceptance of her decision. Karai thinks it's the first time she's gotten that from him, and she secretly tucks that small victory away to savor for these last few moments.

(In all the ways that matter, she has never grown out of being that haggard little street urchin desperate for acknowledgement, approval, acceptance, and her father reinforced the idea that all of it had to be earned, including mercy and life. She doesn't know what to do with gifts given freely.)

She half-expects him to lecture her, given how captive an audience she is, to try and get her to renounce her ways, admit she's wrong, ask again why she didn't leave her father, and she braces herself for it. As the minutes pass, though, he says nothing, not even moving, just a still sentinel, and he'd seem like an impartial witness but for the fact that it was his sword that had killed her and that he bothered to stay in the first place.

The silence is heavy, as hard to breathe through as the blood leaking into her lungs, and for all that she doesn't want to open herself up to any questions, she has plenty of her own.

"Why now?" she asks, knowing he'll understand and fairly certain he'll respond. Her voice is weak, and not entirely involuntarily; she's not above using whatever emotions Leonardo is feeling against him, to make him feel like he owes her an answer.

He lifts his eyes from hers to gaze to the west, and she knows he is looking at Foot headquarters, her crumbling empire. "Because it was time," he says.

"It was time long ago," Karai manages, once she can collect the breath to say so.

Leonardo drops his eyes back to her face. "It was," he agrees. "That's why."

She feels an absurd sense of satisfaction at the admittance, that Leonardo has finally realized that she will not change, will not (cannot) abandon her duty, that he cannot shift her. (It almost overcomes the pang she feels at knowing it means he has also finally written her off as being beyond help. She's never wanted his help, his offers of a chance to leave her father, but there's a sense of loss, nonetheless, in knowing that he considers her a lost cause.) She wants to say that he should have seen that sooner, but she imagines he knows that as well, so she holds her tongue; she doesn't have so much breath left that she can spare it to say things they both already know.

She knows she should take the opportunity of silence to come to terms with things, but finds there is precious little fuss within her to resolve. She is dying; that is simply all there is to it. There is no point in denying it or hoping she will survive, not with the way her breath whistles wetly in her throat, not with the way her chest feels increasingly heavy. It's the end that comes to everyone; for a warrior, it often comes sooner rather than later, and that is a fact that is accepted early on by anyone who takes up a sword.

She expects to feel furious at losing, or guilty for failing to avenge her father, but while those emotions are there, they are muted and dull. Mainly, she just feels resigned. She's never had the time to dream or make plans for her life, and as such, has nothing to regret not doing, other than not avenging her father. There's just mild surprise and a tiny breath of fear…but there's never been anything but death waiting for her, so even that fades away.

There's also a heady sense of a relief. It's finally over. Not as she would have hoped, but then the world has spent the last two-dozen years showing her that her hopes mean nothing and have never factored into how her life will go. She got an end to everything, the feud and the blood-guilt and the indecision, and she knows to be content enough with that.

Karai relaxes, riding out the waves of pain and bracing herself to cough and spit blood, doing Leonardo the courtesy of turning away from him to do so.

Inexplicably, when she subsides and lies back panting, noting the growing numbness in her arms and legs, Leonardo leans forward and gently wipes the blood from her chin with his wrist guard. If she had any blood to spare, she suspects it would have rushed to her face, either from embarrassment or surprise or anger at the careful gesture. Instead, she takes advantage of his proximity to reach out with what little strength she has left and clumsily shove his bandana up and off his eyes, giving into an old, nearly eradicated curiosity to see what he truly looked like beneath his mask.

She barely succeeds, given that Leonardo flinches back at the movement and the breach of his personal space. Still, once he seems to get his surprise under control, he slowly lifts the fabric off the rest of the way, meeting her eyes steadily.

He is so young. Leonardo's eyes are wide and clear beneath the mask, the skin around them slightly pale from being hidden. The mask adds silent authority, as do his weapons and the knowledge of his skills; seeing him openly, he looks so young.

(A handful of years her junior, and she has always considered him old enough to die. What does it say that she feels she is too young?)

Karai manages a small nod, feeling as if she owes him that much for acceding to her silent request, and her thoughts turn, as they often do, to her father. What would he say if he could see her now?

It's not hard to come up with an answer. He would ignore her in favor of attacking Leonardo, because everything—and everyone—had always come second to his desire to rule and his hatred of the Hamato clan. Afterwards, win or lose, he'd likely kill her, for losing, for not attacking Leonardo while he was vulnerable, for accepting compassion from an enemy.

She wonders what Leonardo's family will do after this. He will tell them of her death, she knows that, but she imagines he will keep the details to himself. So much disappears inside Leonardo's thoughts, she is certain, kept quietly forever; never shared, but never forgotten, either. She is oddly content to think that she might be included in those annals, where she is certain that nothing is ever lost.

(She does not wonder if she will be missed, because there is no safe or happy answer to such a question. She knows she will be remembered, and is well aware that that is often all that anyone can ask.)

It is morbidly amusing to imagine his family's reactions. Michelangelo and Donatello will be relieved, she knows, glad to see the end of the fighting, their spirits too in love with peace to truly relish lives dictated by battle. At the very least, they will most likely not revel in her death, but they will be glad for it nonetheless. Raphael will no doubt be vindicated, full of the savage satisfaction she has seen so often as he and his brothers disappear after yet another victory against her and her forces. He has never trusted her and never forgiven her, she knows. If she'd been just another enemy, he likely would have simply hated her the same way he hated all the Foot, fiercely but impersonally, for her association alone. But what she'd done to Leonardo had earned her a special place in Raphael's disdain, and it isn't hard to recall the seething looks of loathing he seemed to reserve especially for her. She wonders if he will at least restrain his celebration while around Leonardo.

And the rat, how will he respond, she wonders. He too will be glad of her death, no doubt, glad to see an end of the long feud. Much as she hates him and knows the feeling is mutual, she somehow thinks he will not revel in it either. She doesn't know whether it's because they're better than her, or because she simply means less to them. She doesn't want to think about it.

But Leonardo. She can't help being curious about his reaction, and the idle conversation and musings keep her mind off the slow, creeping cold that is spreading through her and the way it feels like heat is either burning or tearing through her gut and how hard it is becoming to breathe.

"Are you glad?" she asks, ignoring the bubbling at the back of her throat as she speaks.

Leonardo frowns, and she never knew there was so much expression in his eyes, hidden as they've always been. "About what?"

"That I am dying."

Emotion flits across his face, there and gone again. "I'm glad the feud is over. I'm glad to know that my family will be safer now."

She can hear the quiet _no_ behind his words, because she knows if he truly was glad, he would say so; he'd certainly never spared her the ugly truth before. She'd been the one to scream her dissatisfaction at him as the Utroms had passed their judgment and sent her away, but she knows he'd been screaming those same words back at her with his eyes and each blow from his swords almost from the first day they met. "And that you have revenge for…what happened on the ship?" She can't bring herself to call it a betrayal, because it had been an accident, and even if it hadn't been, she'd had no choice, and why couldn't anyone else see that it had been his fault for trusting her in the first place and corrupting her with that trust?

He shakes his head. "This was never about that," he answers solemnly. "If I sought revenge every time someone I tried to help turned on me, I'd have killed two out of every three people we've saved in this city."

The words sink into her just as sharply as his sword, despite the lack of rancor or accusation. He simply speaks it like a truth, wounding and wounded in the same breath.

"This is not what I wanted," she says suddenly. It's not an attempt at anything as ridiculous as symmetry, to mimic her words to Leonardo when any hope of accord between them had been shattered for good—it's just that those are the words she needs and means now. She needs to make it known, and someone has to hear it. She never wanted any of it—the self-doubt, the recriminations, the failure, none of it. She never wanted to lose, and even for all her weariness with the feud, she never wanted to die. She never wanted to have met Leonardo in the first place, but she thinks that's been her fate since she first took her father's hand, and she can't quite say if she never wanted to have met her father at all. The empire he brought her into had been the beginning of her new life, but the bloody history it was built on had been her ending as well. She can't say whether she regrets it. She just knows that when she'd said yes, this had never been what she'd wanted.

"I know," he answers. "It's not what I wanted either."

It's not a platitude, and it doesn't help. This has never been about what they wanted. The only comfort Karai can take from Leonardo's words is the knowledge that he will not walk away from this feeling like the winner, even if he is; he will merely feel as if he has lost less. It's almost enough.

For a while, her breath is the only thing that fills the silent space between them as she pants through the pain that is becoming harder to ignore, even as it slowly numbs her.

Everything is going dark, with spots flaring like stars in her vision, blocking out parts of the sky, the buildings, Leonardo's face. In one breath, there's a black hole in the clouds above her; in another, Leonardo's eyes disappear into shadow. Sounds dim, from the traffic a world below her to the quiet breaths at her side. She finds that inexplicably, she's scared. The warrior in her sneers at the weakness, but given the way she's dying—just a lonely woman with her rival/comrade/executioner sitting beside her—she figures she's allowed to be weak. She's bleeding out in every way possible on a dirty rooftop in a filthy city, not for a person or even a cause, and it's three years and countless battles and two sword strikes away from being a warrior's death. She's dying as herself and her father's daughter, and she wonders if it's a gift or a disgrace, if the flinty-eyed orphan she'd once been would be disgusted or disappointed or relieved to see her as she was now.

"Leonardo," she says, and it's a request and a confirmation, a question and a plea, condemnation and gratitude all together, and he was always the only one with a will strong enough to make hers waver. She doesn't know what it is she wants to say, but she wants to say it.

"I'm still here," is the quiet response. It's half of the things she wants, but still not enough. He is still so soft, even now.

"What will you do now?" she manages to ask, and suddenly it feels like the exact right thing to ask, everything in one question, shades of their past and a glimpse of a future unstained by their blood feud, and she finds the strength to turn her head towards him, desperate to hear his reply. She will die with or without the answer, and it shouldn't mean anything to her, but somehow the knowledge of what will happen after her death seems vitally important.

Leonardo's expression is old, tired, and somehow full of peace enough for both of them. He reaches out to sweep the hair out of her face, his hand on her forehead like a benediction as he leans closer, somehow seeming to know how her vision is fading. "I will send someone for you," he promises.

And oh, it shouldn't mean so much to her, but it means everything. It feels like more kindness in six words than anyone has showed her in a lifetime. It's something like a parent's assurance, a nightlight left on to fight the shadows, a promise not to leave her alone in the dark.

She thinks that if she knew how to love, not just how to be loyal, she'd love him for it. As it is, she is so grateful for the promise and the knowledge that he will go on, that she will be cared for, that she won't be anyone's burden any longer. He will continue as he always has, surviving, enduring, outpacing everyone. She thinks she can see his future in his face, lines appearing and deepening as he ages, as the world continues to wear on and disappoint and ignore him. He will survive, because if she couldn't kill him, no one else will be able to manage it. She can see him traveling the world, absorbing everything and going everywhere without leaving a single footprint, turning with the world until he is as old as the city he protects. She imagines there will be entire worlds of secrets behind his eyes by then, cataloged and coded; some bitter, some precious, and others left on their shelves to gather dust, never disturbed again—she imagines she will be one such secret. Her only wish, oddly enough, would be to see him in the future he'll leave for once she's gone, to see how far he can grow, to see what peace looks like, to see if there could ever have been a place for her in that peace.

Or maybe she already knows. Maybe this is peace, being finished with everything, being too numb to feel the cold or pain, slipping away into dark sleep as gently as a petal on water, secure in the knowledge that there will be no more battles for her, that she is not alone, that someone is looking after her at the very end.

Her eyes don't want to stay open any longer, and she contents herself with one last glimpse of the stars and Leonardo, the place of her beginning and the means of her end.

As she lets go, there is a quiet murmur like funeral rites beside her, the words twining down after her as she falls. Someone is still there, but she can't stay any longer. She wants to manage a thank you, or maybe goodbye; she owes so much, and wants to pay at least this.

"_Watashi wa kore…de shitsurei shimasu_."

Somehow, she doesn't think she imagines the faint touch on her forehead, or the quiet words in her ear.

"_Ki wo tsukete_."

The farewell follows her into the darkness, and as she slips away, the shadows seem to whisper a greeting.

_Okaeri nasai_.

_Welcome home, welcome home_.

* * *

><p>Empty-handed I entered the world<p>

Barefoot I leave it.

My coming, my going—

Two simple happenings

That got entangled.

—Kozan Ichikyo

* * *

><p><strong>AN**: And there we go. For those who are curious, the title is based on this quote from Nietzsche: "Not every end is the goal. The end of a melody is not its goal, and yet if a melody has not reached its end, it has not reached its goal." The poem at the end is a _jisei_, a Japanese death poem. It, and the Nietzsche quote, just seemed to fit this perfectly. Also, if you want a video to listen to with this that really captures the tone pretty well, enter "Zoku Natsume Yuujinchou ED [eng sub]" in the search box on YouTube and click on the first entry that comes up. The tone of the song is great, and most of the lyrics are even applicable in a way, which is neat. Anyway, just something to check out if you're interested. Constructive criticism or alerts about any mistakes are always appreciated, and reviews, as always, are love. Thanks for reading.

_Watashi wa kore de shitsurei shimasu_=I hope you don't mind if I leave now/Excuse me for leaving first.

_Ki wo tsukete_=Take care.


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